History

Little is known about the early life of the man who
was to become known across the world as The Mist. Named Kyle, he was born
shortly before the turn of the 20th century in Canada, the country where
he was raised. He enlisted in the army early during World War I and rose
to the rank of Captain quickly. During the latter days of the War, he was
station in Europe and became part of the infantry along the German lines.
One night, pinned by superior forces, he faced a crisis of character as
Germans bayoneted his men and bid to kill them all before the evening was
done. Kyle snapped and, in a patriotic rage, led a heroic charge against
the Germans. Miraculously, every bullet fired at him missed as he slaughtered
his way across the plains and into the German trenches. His men rallied
and the Canadian forces held the field. Kyle was awarded the Cross of Valor
for his efforts (revealed in Starman vol. 2 #24).

After the war, Kyle enrolled in college and obtained
a degree in the sciences, most like physics. He developed a wide array
of inventions using his own funds but met little success in promoting them.
The two main inventions he generated was an invisibility solution and a
matter destabilzer. The invisibility solution, or "invisio-solution", was
a light-defractive liquid that caused a bending of any light that struck
it. Objects washed in this solution appeared invisible (introduced in Adventure
Comics #67). The matter destabilzer was a more primitive device, but
potentially much more powerful. Anything bathed in the rays of this device
became structurally unstable and disintegrated. However, at least when
originally conceived, the device was unpredictable, having various lag
times before the target disintegrated (introduced in Sandman Mystery
Theatre #37).

Disgruntled with his lack of success in Canada, the
Mist moved to America and took up residence in New York City. Lacking adequate
funds and now victim to an alcohol habit, the Mist took the name Smythe
and contacted various criminal elements in the city, using his device as
a threat against their enemies. In 1939, he entered into a competition
to win a War Department contract to develop technology for the US Army.
The public display of his technology was alarming and aroused suspicion
regarding several crimes in the area. Pursued by the Golden Age Sandman
and drinking heavily, the Mist made a mistake and when contracted by the
mob to destroy a building, obliterated the wrong one. The mob took a terrible
vengeance, submitting the scientist to his own matter destabilzer and leaving
him for dead. The Mist, however, was saved by the very unpredictability
of his own device and fled New York City severely injured for his experience.
His crimes during this period were never officially solved (Sandman
Mystery Theatre #37-40).

The Mist eventually recovered and renewed his efforts
with his invisio-solution. It is likely the Mist maintained his connections
with the underworld and possibly waged his first campaign of crime as The
Unseen Man (Adventure Comics #64). At some point, he attempted to
again broker a deal with the U.S. Army but was rebuffed. At this point,
a line was crossed and the Mist devoted the remainder of his extremely
long life to crime. In 1941, he determined to repay the government for
it's rebuke by destroying the steel producing factories in Pittsburgh,
Bethlehem and other western Pennsylvania cities. Setting up a base in a
large cave in Kentucky, he sent henchmen bathed in invisio-solution to
steal plans for key installations from the office of Woodley Allen in Opal
City. The Mist's plan were complicated when a group of tourists, including
Ted Knight and Doris Lee were conducted a tour of the very caves he had
taken as his base. After Ted Knight, as Starman, was distracted by the
theft at Allen's office, the tour group was taken hostage by the Mist.
Hearing a broadcast on the case, Starman rocketed back to Kentucky and
confronted the Mist's men. Taken off guard by one of the so-called "invisible
raiders", Starman was captured and flung into an abyss by the Mist. The
Mist then attempted to coerce Allen's niece Doris Lee to join him but when
he was rebuffed, she also was thrown into the abyss.

As the Mist deployed his agents to bomb western Pennsylvania,
Starman came to and used his gravity rod to return to the surface. En Route,
he managed to catch Doris Lee in mid-flight and left her outside the caves
while he pursued the bombers. The Mist, boarding the last of the planes
personally, re-captured the federal agent's niece and took her hostage
on the flight. Meanwhile, Starman had intercepted and destroyed the Mist's
plane and now turned his attention to the late-arriving Mist. Burning a
hole through the wall of the Mist's ship, Starman confronted the villain
and knocked him unconscious. Rescuing Doris, he allowed the Mist's ship
to crash. The Mist survived and was presumably captured and arrested by
the local authorities (Adventure Comics #67).

The Mist was not long for jail and with a few months
had smuggled enough invisio-solution to make his entire jail cell, with
himself included, seem to disappear. When the guards tried to investigate,
he slipped out and reorganized his old gang. While in jail, The Mist concocted
a plan to coat various items of worth (jewelry, wallets,etc.) with a hypnotic
drug that the Mist would then use as a method of getting them to commit
crimes for him. Initially, his plan was a great success when he got a bank
clerk to bring him $50,000 and a jeweler to empty his diamond trays for
the criminal. His plan went awry when one of his trinkets was found by
an honest woman who returned it to the police. When the story was reported
to the police, Starman paid the young woman a visit only to find her accosted
by the Mist's men. After capturing the men, Starman tracked the Mist to
his hideout in a windmill outside of Opal City and after a brief confrontation,
returned the criminal to the federal authorities (Adventure Comics
#77). The Mist escaped again however and attempted to blackmail banker
Sanderson Block into provided him with his next supply of money. To do
this, he took Block's wife hostage and demanded a large sum of money. Block
himself thwarted the Mist's plans however when he murdered his own wife
to establish himself as the stronger of the two. The entire affair was
witnessed by Starman who captured several of the Mist's cronies. The villain
himself escaped and his capture has never been recorded (Starman 80-Page
Giant #1).

In 1951, hearings by the House Un-American Affairs
Committee forced most heroes to scale back their activities or give up
their costumed identities entirely. The Mist's activities in these intervening
years are unknown. As some point, presumably by the 1960's, he married
and least fathered two children, Kyle and Nash. In the mid-1960's, when
heroes were becoming active again, he re-established his criminal
career with a plot to use a methodology he developed in the 1940's to coerce
innocent victims to commit crimes. This time, he targeted a local flower
shop in Federal City, 1960's home of the Golden Age Black Canary. The shop
was owned by Dinah Drake Lance, the Black Canary herself. At some
point, the Mist's men had gained access to the heroine and under the influence
of the Mist's solutions, drugged flower arrangements she sent to wealthy
clients. In turn, the Mist compelled these affluent individuals to commit
crimes on his behalf. The Mist was foiled when a visit by Ted Knight led
to a teaming of himself as Starman and Black Canary to track the villain.
After a confrontation with his henchmen, the Mist himself was brought to
justice (Brave and the Bold #61). The Mist was to have the last
laugh, however, when a private investigator he had hired discovered
an illicit affair between the two heroes. He attempted to black mail them
into allowing the robbery of an Opal City bank but the heroes resisted
and foiled the crime anyway. To avoid further temptation, the heroes avoided
future casework together and the Mist had effectively ended the pair's
career as a team (Starman Annual #2).

Over the years, either through experimentation or
as a result of his original exposure to his matter destabilizer device,
the Mist's powers began to change. At some point, he no longer needed the
invisio-solution to become invisible and he additionally developed powers
of intangibility as well. Most of the activities of the Mist during this
period are unrecorded, although he is known to have joined the Icicle in
a case in Austin, Texas resulting in the death of the Invisible Hood (revealed
in Starman vol. 2, #2). The next recorded activity of the
Mist occurred when in the mid-1980's when he was contacted by the Ultra-Humanite
to form a Secret Society of Super-Villains. After punishing some former
henchmen whose testimony had sent him to prison, the Mist joined the Ultra-Humanite's
organization. The Ultra-Humanite had devised a machine that, for the sacrifice
of ten heroes to be held in stasis, five from each Earth, all the heroes
on Earth-2 would disappear. Each villain then was assigned a target and
the Mist delivered the Black Canary. As the other members of the Secret
Society completed their task, the heroes were dispatched to Limbo, clearing
Earth-2 of costumed heroes. Unfortunately, the Ultra-Humanite had deceived
the heroes of Earth-1 into helping and while the Mist and his colleagues
waged a massive crime wave on Earth-2, the villains of Earth-1 rescued
the captured heroes in Limbo. In short order, the Secret Society of Super-Villains
were themselves consigned to Limbo and the balance of heroes on Earth-2
was restored (Justice League of America #195-197).

Shortly thereafter, the Ultra-Humanite contacted
himself in the 1940's, allow the earlier form to rescue the Secret Society
from Limbo. Once there, the Ultra-Humanite planned to use the villains
to change the course of history, allowing the Ultra-Humanite to rule. After
some initial success, the Mist, along with the Secret Society, Vulcan and
several of the Humanite's 1940's era henchmen were routed by the All-Star
Squadron and quickly returned to Limbo (All-Star Squadron #24-26,
Annual
#1). The Mist himself soon escaped and attempted to take vengeance on David
Knight while the elder Starman was in Limbo. At one point, he gained even
greater powers and took the name "Nimbus", but the powers were short-lived
and he was foiled by David Knight and Will Payton, each acting as Starman
(Starman vol. 1 #26-27).

By the mid-1990's, the Mist was nearly 100 years
old. Aged and forgetful, the villain wanted to launch one final campaign
against his most persistent adversary: Ted Knight, Starman. Starman, himself
now aged by the outcome of the "Zero Hour" crisis, had passed his mantle
to his son David. A neophyte hero with little training, David was an easy
mark for the Mist's on Kyle, who he groomed to replace him. The Mist then
destroyed Ted Knight's primary observatory and a museum wing dedicated
to Knight's deceased wife Doris. Finally, the Mist captured Ted Knight
himself and held him hostage to blackmail the entire city.

The Mist's scheme was foiled by two miscalculations:
The unlikely heroism of Jack Knight and the mercurial mood of the Shade.
The Shade had long made Opal City his home in various guises when he was
not actively participating in criminal activity and did not care for the
Mist's wanton destruction of it. Instead of abetting the aged super-villain,
the Shade alerted Jack Knight to the intentions of Kyle, the Mist's son
and the police to the location of the Mist. In the meantime, Jack Knight
confronted Kyle in a major aerial battle over Opal City and in a fit of
pure rage, slew the Mist's only son. The capture of the Mist and his daughter
Nash by the police and the death of his son crushed the fragile old man's
mind. Reduced to incoherence the Mist was committed to an insane asylum.
The legacy of the Mist, however, is not ended as Nash as assumed the role
of the Mist and managed to conceive a son by Jack Knight himself. The extent
of the younger Mist's vengeance remains to be seen.

Most recently, the Mist was revealed to be at least
partially restored by Neron (Starman #71). In exchange for his health
and mental faculties, the Mist pledged the destruction of Opal City and
the Knights, a price he was all too wiling to pay. In his final confrontation
with the Knights, he murdered his own daughter and revealed that he had
rigged a large skyscraper with a nuclear warhead. The warhead would explode
when the aging villain failing heart finally ceased to beat. As he had
too many times in the past however, the Mist had underestimated Ted Knight.
The elder hero arrived with a backpack version of his cosmic rod and levitated
the building, the Mist and himself into space, destroyed all three
and saving Opal City one last time (Starman vol 2 #73). The dynasty
of the Mist lives on merged with Kyle Knight, grandson of both hero and
villain alike.

Power and Abilities: The Mist's powers stem from the work of
his own research. In the early phases of his career, he possessed no real
super-powers, relying on an invisio-solution to give him the illusion of
invisibility. He also used his ill-gotten gains to finance his own research,
developing elaborate flying craft and potent narcotics. As time passed,
either through chronic use of various chemical or direct manipulation of
his own biology with devices of his own design, the Mist developed true
super-powers, specifically invisibility and intangibility. At one point,
he also possess powers of weather control and size enhancement but these
were very short-lived.

Weaknesses and Limitations: Early in his career, the Mist's principal
limitations were his humanity and reliance on his accessories. What his
limitations were at the peak of his powers have never been revealed.